Hand-carved, hand-painted wooden cell phones for sale in the gift shop at Pemba Airport, Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, as photographed here. Just yesterday I was reading in A New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting that millions of outdated computers, phones and other gizmos of the rich world are loaded onto container ships and sent to various parts of the poor world where local governments allow them to be dumped, for a small fee, with full knowledge that some of the materials on the insides are toxic and will remain toxic for centuries. So there are plenty of non-functioning electronic marvels for artisans to copy in countries like Mozambique where the average citizen has not even a remote hope of owning the real thing.
At the beginning of 2009 when my existing cell phone contract expired I said the hell with it and have since been living without one. After four months I have not started to miss it yet.